How Hackers Are Causing Hotels to Ditch Key Cards

You just finished driving for hours and you need to stop to sleep for a few hours before traveling any further. The hotel tells you they can’t produce any new keys at this time due to their system being hijacked by hackers. This is one type of situation that may not have happened a few decades ago, but is now an unfortunate reality.

It’s also exactly what happened at the Seehotel Jagerwirt hotel in Austria. They were hit with multiple cyberattacks, with one of them being an attack to their key card system. Some early reports incorrectly stated that people were unable to get into their rooms (that would be a real nightmare), but the hotel simply wasn’t able to create new key cards. This may not sound like a big deal, but this prevented the hotel from letting new customers in, which put a throttle on their business. So this isn’t solely an issue of security, but also an issue of privacy and lost business.

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They weren’t able to get help from police on a matter like this, either. They were unfortunately forced to pay almost $2,000 in bitcoin currency before the hackers gave their system back to them. This is the kind of world we all live in now. Technology is as great as it is vast, and that unfortunately opens up doors we may never want opened — or in this case, prevents new doors from being opened.

The Future of Hackers Attacking Hotels

This situation will only influence and encourage other hackers to attempt the same feats. The hotel had to comply in order to be able to help new guests. This also, of course, creates a precedent that other hackers will definitely take note of. This will no doubt force hotels to stop using the system we’ve all become so accustomed to. It would be incredibly strange if they ended up having to go back to traditional keys, but hopefully that’s not the case.

How Hotels Should Respond

Hopefully, hotels are able to create new and more encrypted technology that will make it easier to protect and secure their information from hackers. However, it’s unclear as to how quickly hotels — nationwide and globally — could update their systems in response to this type of hacking. Nonetheless, if they want to prevent lost business, scams, and loss of funds, they must update their security immediately.